Toxic kitchen fumes disrupted this weeks EU conference, as toxic politics continued to stir populations and politicians throughout the Continent.
In timely fashion, the Telegraph enlightened everyone to concerns over ‘Fake news’, as expressed by senior Tory minister Damian Green.
As Theresa May talked Brexit in Brussels - where EU leaders gathered for a routine conference after strong right-wing electoral gains in Germany and Austria - the Tory’s Secretary of State had a poignant message.
Green did good to address this issue
In the same newspaper that gave Brexit-mad Boris his first stint as a Eurosceptic European correspondent, Green repeated what others had already said about incomprehensible hospitality across the Commons, and that with misinformation in the public domain, “we risk feeding an atmosphere of increasing hatred”.
Green did good to address this issue. Too bad that his colleague and chancellor, Phillip Hammond, had called the EU “the enemy” in recent days. Then came news of Home Office reports revealing a 29% rise in hate crimes in England and Wales.
Perhaps we shouldn't be surprised that disabled people were worse off when it came to crime. The Conservative government were the first to target this particularly vulnerable group, of late. Labour MP, Gareth Snell, told the Commons of a constituent whose death preceded an appeal against disability benefits cuts.
Even Before Brexit, Theresa May’s ‘Go Home’ vans seemed to symbolise Tory contempt for un-registered migrants seeking refuge from more frighteningly intolerant governments abroad.
Today, May’s government exercises a unique brand of ‘Tory tolerance’, which becomes mildly tolerant once it has backtracked on disadvantageous deeds. This week saw the government scrap phone-lines charges to those using benefits helplines, after a push by Labour; or perhaps even basic morality.
Scraping the barrel
Then again, the tories can only tolerate the banks and big corporations splashing-out billions on deals with the DUP, high-speed railways and Chinese nuclear power stations.
Though scraping the barrel for a few million to prop-up the health service.
This government has done much to divide society itself, with communities caught between powerful binaries such as independence or union, Remain and Leave, and low-wage or ‘elite’.
Now the Tories are thinking about ‘Marxist’ energy price caps, we know that Damian Green and his colleagues are only catching up with the real grievances in society.
This is not a nation of haters, but of misinformation and misuse of power. Though many saw through the Daily Mail’s hate campaign against Jeremy Corbyn before the snap election.
That is not to say, in addition, that some on the left are not responsible for our ‘fake news’ epidemic.
When the Tories stop with slogans, bluster and big-red-buses, there will be much less ‘fake news’ in British politics.
We need our facts to be strong, and our thoughts to be stable.